***I’m not sure what you’re asking. For all the good we do, God wills it. That includes preaching. God is the first cause. It is not that God “agrees” with us when we choose to do good. God made the choice first, and then we carried it out.***
Micromanagement? Are you saying that God chooses everything that we do? If I get hail damage on my car from the storm today, it’s God’s will? If I decide to go into a nudie bar or get drunk that it’s God’s will? How can I possibly sin if everything that happens is God’s micromanaged ‘plan”?
Back to the old “God is the author of evil” POV? Algore getting the jet set treatment for massively lying to the world is God’s will? The vicious attacks on Mother Teresa are God’s will? Jeffrey Dahmer is God’s will? I still can’t seem to reconcile that with the message of love and salvation that I read from the Gospels.
***Of course any benefits to the non-elect, all non-elect including Catholic non-elect, would only be of any use during this life. All of the non-elect share the same eternity, but they obviously have very different qualities of lives here on earth.***
Are you saying that if you read Scripture to a non elect who couldn’t appreciate it anyway that he’d get a better job, or a new car, or a wonderful wife or something like that? Where is this Scrfpturally supported?
***I would say that I know both.***
As kosta and I have repeatedly said: you must separate belief from knowledge because they are two different things.
Reformed theology, to put simply: we are who we are, what we are and where we are because God willed it.
This means the good and the evil. God created the good and the evil to fulfill His "plan." So, no person in the world that lived, lives or will ever live is anything but another cog on God's wheel, driving towards the completion of the "plan."
In other words, to God, good and evil are simply "tools" in His workshop, and to the extent that they fulfill His "plan" (which si always, of course), they are both "good."
Add to this double predestination, and you discover that it makes no difference what we do or say (even though the Bible says otherwise in no uncertain terms), our fate has been predestined by God's choice. Thus, behind Judas is really God!
Luther set out to reform Church practices, and he and his followers ended up deforming Christianity, indeed God Himself!
I am not saying that I know for sure that God chooses EVERYTHING that we do. For example, I don't know if God has anything to do with which shoe I put on first in the morning. He very well may, but I'm not sure about that. What I am sure of is that everything that is a part of God's plan does happen. And it's not by chance, it is by design. For example, if God wanted you to stay home for something this Saturday, then you ain't goin' to any nudie bar. However, if He wanted you to prevent a mugging at the nudie bar, then you're going. The point is whether it is a part of God's plan. But regardless of whether it is a part of God's plan or not, you are still responsible (answerable) for your own sin.
.......... The vicious attacks on Mother Teresa are God’s will? Jeffrey Dahmer is God’s will? I still can’t seem to reconcile that with the message of love and salvation that I read from the Gospels.
That is the difference between accepting that God is in control (and doing things we can't explain), and defaulting to the man-centered notion that man is really in control and God follows along dutifully. One is an omnipotent God and one is a very weak God.
Are you saying that if you read Scripture to a non elect who couldn’t appreciate it anyway that he’d get a better job, or a new car, or a wonderful wife or something like that?
No, I'm only saying that maybe that person would choose to sin LESS. I just think that the TRUTH might have some good effect on everybody, even the reprobate.